Ortofon RS-212 tonearm Vertical vs Horizontal

Sidebar 1: Vertical vs Horizontal

There seems to be some confusion in the audio industry as to just which tonearm pivot is which. Some writers identify the pivots according to whether their axis lies vertically or horizontally, others identify them according to the mode of arm motion that they are related to. For the record, we wish to state that we use the latter system. (After all, the axis of a unipivot needle is vertical, but the arm moves both vertically and horizontally about the pivot.) When we refer to the vertical pivots, we mean those pivots about which the arm moves vertically; horizontal (or lateral) pivots are those about which the arm swings from side to side.J. Gordon Holt

who would have thought that in 2017 we would be reviewing tonearms and cartridges? This is what I love about audio. It never changes. I love vinyl even though I know that it's primitive tech that cannot possibly(in theory) sound as good as digital. But still, to me, it sometimes sounds better. Maybe because it's actual sound recorded physically in a record groove. Instead of sound converted to some soulless mathematical number stream. Maybe it loses something in that conversion. Something which can never be retrieved. Something having to do with real live music listened to in a real live venue. Maybe digital is like computer generated virtual reality, and analog is actual first hand reality. Is that plausible?